Steve Matai will be taking on just about everyone this weekend. Photograph: Colin Whelan/AAP Image

Blue-tongued bash

And so to the stadium named after a beer named after a blue-tongued lizard for the blockbuster between Rabbitohs and Sea Eagles in Gosford on the glorious New South Wales Central Coast. Plenty of plot twists here, people: The Return of Mighty GI and Hot Johnny Sutton; two sets of star halves; Jamie Lyon v Matt King, The Stewarts v The Burgesses; Steve Matai v Everybody; Sea Eagles on a roll; Rabbits on a late-season stutter. Who's going to win? Manly, probably. Anthony Watmough is a decent loss but Glenn Stewart's back in hot form, he said it himself, and he doesn't speak often. Souths won't have Sammy Burgess, outed for a fortnight for an ad-hoc testicle twist (ha!) but he's replaced by big brother Luke, another crazy meat-axe Pom from the depths of Hull or thereabouts. It'll be close and competitive, and there'll be many, many completions. Fair bit of kicking. The odd stinkaroo. Manly by six.

Glenn Close in Canberra

Went to Canberra for the corresponding game last season, Raiders versus Bulldogs, and can safely report it was colder than Glenn Close taking a screaming kid on a roller coaster. There were people in Himalayan ponchos, in Peruvian beanies, rugged up like they were taking the kids to the snow and leaving them there for a week's survival training. Men stood in clumps and leaned on railings, tinnies attached to their lips like old mate from Dumb & Dumber sucking on a pole. Cold? Frozen ice planet of Hoth, pal. Frozen ice planet of Hoth. This Saturday's game, however, is on at 3pm, an old-fashioned time but a good one for crisp and free-running rugby league. Day-time footy is the best footy because the ball is easier to see and to handle, and the ground is drier underfoot. Unfortunately the God of Television decrees we must watch games at night-time. Anyway! This promises to be a decent hit-out with two teams on the cusp. The Dogs are fifth on 26 points, the Raiders ninth on 24. Lose this and you risk being rissoled out the comp. Win and you can firm up fifth. Who'll win? Dunno. Dogs are tough and super-competitive. Canberra are kooks. Half-time or full-time draw would be 9-1 with several betting agencies.

Beer nuts

Apart from something truly excellent on at the movies, nothing excites the people of Wollongong on a Saturday night more than a Derby Game at WIN Stadium. The Sharks head down the Freeway a true Bottom-of-the-Top-Eight team: they win some, they lose some, they don't know if they'll have all their points erased or their captain outed for several years. They are sixth, just ahead of a panting pack of fellow pretenders. They will not win the Telstra Premiership. The Dragons? Pass the beer nuts.

Super Gowie

In 1996, Paul Keating was prime minister, the highest-grossing (and most stupid) film was Independence Day, and Super League had split the comp and turned everything to so many lice. And into those tumultuous times came 18-year-old Craig Gower, making his debut for Penrith Panthers against Gold Coast Chargers. Since then he's had a true roller-coaster ride – the highs of premiership and representative success, the Glenn Close-like lows of injury, controversy and loss. But he's always been a footballer – tough, smart, resilient, skilful. And aged 35 is a poster-boy for the ones we get rid of too soon. Pommy and bush footy is full of blokes like Gower, still capable, still valuable, still footballers. And while it's too bad he probably won't be playing Sunday afternoon in the Knights' crunch match with Brisbane, he will still influence talented Knights half Tyrone Roberts. Because a) he's been telling Tyrone how to play, and b) if Tyrone doesn't listen he'll be playing reserve grade next week.

Tigers home and away

Normally a Monday night game between competition frontrunners and spoon-bound battlers would not excite the senses. But when you've got two star Kiwis in either side, men who've attracted more column inches than the prime minister of New Zealand and his entire cabinet, indeed the entire country of New Zealand, then you have a Game To Watch. Will Mick Potter play Benji Marshall following his Message In Blue? It appears so; he's named as five-eighth and captain. It's a Wests Tigers "home" game, played at the Roosters home ground (it's a money thing), yet you wonder how many Tigers supporters will make the trip from the inner- and outer-west of old Sydney Town to see their team thoroughly emasculated by the tearaway Chooks. Grand Old Man of The Wing Lote Tuqiri is back to face the super-fast Roosters back division, a team of whippets and whelps with jet shoes instead of feet. Braith Anasta's halfback, Keith Galloway's prop, and James Tedesco is a slick mover. But the Chooks should scorch them off the Earth. Be a few points in it, anyway.